Poems by William Carney

Cities

Citiesa nuclear peace poem

In Cities, a nuclear peace poem, Carney’s epic voice emergesto engage the mushrooming magnitude of late 20th Century war. It’s the mid-1980s and the poet is in his mid-30s, just gaining professional traction, as he begins to discern the incipient inferno that rages inches beneath the daily. . . More

. . . street textures of his city and irradiates through the entire history
of his species and his life. Weirdly prophetic, the book includes a presidential justification
for invading Iraq, although the oil wars in that country actually started a decade later. And
the cover photo includes the twin towers, two decades before they were brought down. As the
poem says of the Bomb, “terrorists hold it, making their demands.” Ultimately, the poem is
likewise prophetic of the uneasy nuclear armistice that we have so far managed to achieve,
though as the closing lines state, that slow dawn of peace remains a “pending” proposition.Close